21 Responses to this entry

Hello all. I was recently in a argument with certain individuals about the
ability to link certain traits to genetics. Essentially it boiled down to this
they agreed that genes affected pretty much every trait of humans, however
their counter was one I do not know how to argue against. They went on to
say that the genes effectivly did not matter because epigenetics decided which
genes are actually activated, and used. Epigenetics can change based on the enviromental
factors that happen to you and past generations, they can change even when a person is alive.
However it takes a few generations to change the epigenetics majorly, you can still have changes
that are pretty big with the DNA being the same. Any one here have any thoughts that would
defeat that kind of logic? I cannot think of a counter. Is there one?

Right, so if we have the the proper epigenetic influence, sometimes your kids are born as squirrels.
Epigenetics can’t allow you to express genes you don’t have. They can reduce, but not increase, your potential.

Epigentics basically means methylation, which can disable genes. If you’re very lucky you can get a deleterious gene disabled, but thermo #2 being what it is…
Methylation’s main function as far as I know is specialization away from stem cells. What makes a liver cell not a muscle cell is mainly methylating all the muscle cell specific genes. Biology is complicated so I’m simplifying, but for the purposes of verbal debate the complications don’t matter.

Methylation is normally genetic. but it is also used to nudge the genome based on environmental cues. This is the only thing that makes it epigenetic, especially as there’s evidence that methylation patterns are partially heritable. For example famine victims have characteristic methylations which they can partially pass on to their kids.

If every human had the same genome +/- methylation, then methylation errors would literally result in a white kid being born to black parents once in a while.

admin Reply:May 7th, 2014 at 5:14 am

“Is there one?” — oh yes. I guess you could start here. I’d recommend you run this question past a serious HBD blogger, if you’re ready for the subsequent avalanche of correction.

Wonderful as the book may be, I suspect it will have all the impact of the echo from a pebble tossed down a well. Same as they say, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. And there are a lot of salaries depending on not understanding. Here’s your T-shirt slogan:

The current level of mainstrem smart-fraction disourse on cognitive differences between races is that anyone who would entertain the possibility of such, is a heretic. If the level of discourse moves towards the truth, the next level will be that while it is possible for evolution to have produced small cognitive differences between races any such differences are so small as to be insignificant, and more or less swamped by environmental effects, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a heretic, plus what about epigenetics? If Wade’s book is going to have any effect, the best we could hope is a movement from the first level of discouse I described to the latter. I don’t think it will have such an effect. But I do believe such a change is not too many years away and Wade’s book will move us towards it. When such a change is effected I expect the movement of the discourse towards the truth to accelerate. I know many of you are less sanguine.